


Creatures of Habit

by nagi_schwarz



Series: Blood and Water [6]
Category: Stargate Atlantis
Genre: M/M, Past Child Abuse, Rough Sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-09
Updated: 2016-11-09
Packaged: 2018-08-29 23:58:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,554
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8510938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nagi_schwarz/pseuds/nagi_schwarz
Summary: Written for the comment_fic prompt:"Stargate Atlantis, John Sheppard,I cannot communicateLike I wish I couldI do not deal with my problemsLike I know I shouldI am out of my depthI am out of my league(Everclear)"AU of 2x08 Conversion.Evan Lorne isn't afraid of what he'll do for John so much as who he becomes when times get desperate.





	

Everyone on base was terrified of what John would become if the iratus retrovirus took over fully, that he’d be feral, all instinct, part hungry monster, part super-soldier, souped up on super-healing and lightning-fast reflexes, super-strength and an apex predator’s senses. They were right to be afraid, but Evan wasn’t afraid of the soldier. He was afraid of that deeper part of John, that part cultivated in his youth, with cruelty and iron-fisted control and violence. Evan was afraid of Baby John.

Even more than Baby John, Evan was afraid of Bluebell. He’d sacrificed Walker and Stevens without a damn blink. He’d heard their screams, and for one second, he’d calculated the odds, of going back into the cave, of spraying the place down with salt water and machine gun fire, and he’d picked the path that was the most efficient, the path of least resistance, the path of _getting the job done_. He’d pulled the pin on the grenade and tossed it, and just like that, two of his officers were dead.

For John.

For getting the job done.

Back in Atlantis, Beckett and the scientists were crammed into the lab, panicking. Rodney, Ronon, and Teyla were huddled at their usual table in the commissary, AR-1 against the universe, worried about John.

Weir was between a rock and a hard place. John was the military commander of Atlantis, but he was out of commission. Evan was his second-in-command, but while Caldwell was present, he was the ranking officer, and he wouldn’t hesitate to remake Atlantis in his own image, in his own glory, and leave John to the virus, the same way he’d left Aiden Ford to the Wraith.

Evan refused to let that happen.

Humans were creatures of habit, were more creatures and animals than they liked to admit. When things got difficult, got stressful, they reverted to old habits. Weir tried to talk things out - with John, with Caldwell. Rodney got loud and impatient and angry. Beckett became quiet and tense. Ronon itched to kill something. Teyla stepped back, fought for objective distance, protected herself emotionally.

Evan became Bluebell.

And he didn’t want to become that. He was better than that. He’d fought long and hard to get past that. He wasn’t supposed to sacrifice human lives without a thought, wasn’t supposed to put a bullet in it and move on. But he had to save John, and he had to stop Caldwell from his attempted coup.

Weir refused to sacrifice another team to attempt to save one man. Evan knew the plan he’d proposed sounded insane, but in his head, in that dark place, in that Bluebell place, it had made sense. Bluebell ran the human calculus, and the solution was simple and elegant. John Sheppard was worth a dozen men, easily. After all, it had been one John Sheppard and not a dozen men who’d fended off the Genii the year before. A dozen Marines, a good supply of salt water, an egg picker.

Weir said no. She looked at him askance, and Evan couldn’t explain that John wasn’t just his CO, that John was the one who silenced the screaming and the shadows in his head.

John thought he was the one who’d won, that time in the back of his car, when they were sixteen and too young for the blood on their hands. But Evan was the one who’d won. John’s mouth on his had wakened Evan from the coma Bluebell had put him in. A thousand kisses, a handful of orgasms, and Evan knew how to escape.

Evan had to escape again.

There was another way to do this.

So Evan tapped on his radio, checked in with Kusanagi. John was devolving fast, there were teams of Marines out looking for him. He’d attacked Weir, he was less and less human with each passing second.

Biro, a pathologist, was working with Beckett on the problem of John. She had a crazy theory, hadn’t dared pitch it to Beckett, especially now that the manhunt for John was on. But if John was more bug than human, he could go into the bug lair unharmed.

Evan knew what he had to do.

Caldwell was directing the Marines to sweep the base, catch John. They were operating under the assumption that John was a soldier gone darkside. Teyla and Ronon were probably hoping they’d get lucky, knowing John as well as they did, that they’d get to him first before one of Caldwell’s overeager Marines from the _Daedalus_ did something to John that was irreversible.

It was Evan who found John, because even though John was more iratus than human, the parts of his human mind that would succumb to the change last were the instinct part of his brain, the creature part of his brain. The habit part of his brain.

Humans were creatures of habit. Evan became Bluebell.

Bluebell went looking for Baby John.

No one thought to look in the jumper bay because they assumed John wasn’t capable of piloting a jumper in his condition. No one realized that Atlantis could shield a person from the life signs detectors, because no one besides John, Evan, and maybe Beckett were strong enough to ask. And no one would be able to override a lock on the jumper door short of disabling the power source first.

But Jumper One opened for Evan with the barest thought.

And there was John, crouched on the floor of the jumper, watching one of the HUD screens avidly. For one moment Evan was a teenager again, sitting in the front seat of a Dodge Challenger, while Baby John Sheppard watched the silhouettes on the window shade of Murphy’s Pub and narrated the scene inside, who was where, who had the cigar and the whiskey and who was leaning on a pool cue.

And then John turned to look at him.

Evan had heard John was devolving, but he hadn’t been allowed in to see -

John’s skin was blue, hints of scales along his jaw and throat. His eyes were golden, with vertical-slit pupils, and his hands were clawed.

John tilted his head, sniffed the air, and his pupils dilated.

Evan murmured softly in Irish, “ _That’s right, it’s me. If you want me, come and get me._ ”

John pounced. He was inhumanly strong, inhumanly fast. He threw Evan down, landed on his chest, locked a hand around Evan’s throat.

Evan fought back the instinctive urge to swallow, to struggle, gazed up into those golden eyes. If he kept calm, he could still breathe.

John stared down at him for a long moment. Then his grip tightened, and it was like all the air was sucked out of Evan’s lungs. He thrashed. John wrenched his head sideways, and Evan knew it was over, broken neck.

Teeth sank into his throat, not hard enough to draw blood but hard enough to bruise. The grip around Evan’s windpipe loosened, and John was pinning both of Evan’s wrists with one hand, was working Evan’s jacket open with the other. He was mouthing along Evan’s neck, scraping roughly with his teeth, and Evan moaned.

“Evan,” John breathed.

“ _Sean._ ”

“Evan, I - I want.” John rolled his hips against Evan’s. He was hot and hard through his clothes. “I - please. I can’t -”

Couldn’t talk. Couldn’t think.

“ _Don’t talk. Don’t think._ ” Evan thrust up against John. “ _I’m here. Take me._ ”

John didn’t need much convincing. He made short work of Evan’s clothes, tearing away his jacket, rucking up his shirt, unbuckling his belt. He worked Evan’s pants and boxer briefs down to his knees and rolled him over. He kept Evan’s wrists above his head while he fumbled with his own clothes, and then his hands were branding hot on Evan’s hips as he thrust inside, no warning, no prep.

Evan cried out, in pleasure and in pain, and then John was fucking him roughly, claws breaking skin, teeth sharp on the back of Evan’s neck. John came embarrassingly quickly, but he was too far gone to care. He pulled out, flipped Evan onto his back, and then he was on top of Evan, pumping Evan’s half-hard cock with one hand and dragging his teeth over Evan’s nipples.

Evan knew it was fucked-up and wrong, but it made sense in his body, if not his head. Pain was pleasure. Pain was affection. Pain was the only thing that was real.

John was hard again, impossibly, new alien physiology, and he buried himself between Evan’s thighs, fingers questing. After the girth of John’s cock, a couple of fingers were no big deal, and John had Evan writhing in short order, crooking his fingers and stroking over that sweet spot inside Evan. When Evan was fully hard, John wrestled Evan out of his clothes the rest of the way, tugged Evan up onto his lap, thrust into him again. He kept his strokes long and slow, bent himself in half to lick at Evan’s nipples.

He forgot about Evan’s hands, let out a wordless cry of surprise when Evan flipped them over.

Evan had to wriggle himself back onto John’s cock, watched John’s eyes roll back in his head when Evan slid all the way down, and then Evan was riding him, thighs flexing, in total control.

“I said, sir, _take me_.” Evan pinned John’s wrists above his head and grinned down at him, and John snapped back to lucidity.

“Insubordination,” he snarled. He wrenched himself free of Evan’s grip with barely any effort, and once again he was on top.

He thrust into Evan without hesitation, and Evan wrapped his legs around John’s waist, gripped his shoulders and hung on while John drilled him into the floor.

John reached between them, curled his fingers around the head of Evan’s cock, twisted his wrist, and Evan threw his head back with a cry, came.

John followed immediately after, buried his face in the crook of Evan’s throat and thrust jaggedly, riding the crest.

They lay tangled for a long moment, breath deepening, heartbeats slowing.

And then John said, “Evan?”

Evan leaned up and kissed him. “Come on, John. There’s something you need to do.”

John slid out of Evan’s embrace. “What the hell did I just do?”

“Something human,” Evan whispered.

“Evan -?”

“Call me Bluebell, Baby John.”

John looked shocked, afraid. Evan smiled grimly. They were in over their heads, had been since that first encounter in the showers. And this - this was out of their league. Out of Evan and John’s league. But Bluebell and Baby John had done things unthinkable even to seasoned soldiers.

“Now come on.” Evan used his t-shirt to clean them both up as best as he could, tugged his pants and uniform jacket back on and zipped them up. He was commando and shirtless beneath his uniform. Hopefully in all the chaos, no one would notice.

John climbed unsteadily to his feet, watching Evan with wide, wary eyes. Evan had Atlantis keep them both off the life signs detectors until they reached Weir’s office. Evan marched John into the office, as if John were a prisoner.

“Major!” Weir’s eyes went wide. “John!”

John shook his head. “I can’t - talk. Like I want. I -”

“I have a plan,” Evan said.

“I’m not sending another team out there,” Weir said.

“Not another team. The same team.”

Weir, who’d been reaching for her radio, paused. “Explain.”

Evan tapped his radio. “Get me Beckett.”

Teyla, Ronon, and Rodney looked at Evan askance as he led John to the gate, kept a hand on his shoulder the entire march to the foothills to find another iratus nest. Beckett protested the entire way, this idea was madness, Biro had been insane to suggest this to harebrained scheme to Evan, but Evan didn’t care.

When they reached another cave, Evan tugged John around to face him.

“ _Baby John. Be brave._ ”

John nodded, spun away, and marched into the cave.

He emerged a couple of minutes later, with Beckett’s egg container full.

As soon as Beckett had the container in hand, Ronon stunned John. He carried John all the way back to the gate.

Evan wasn’t allowed to see John while he was in the infirmary receiving treatment from Beckett and the rest of the science and medical team. He made his report to Weir, and then one of Caldwell’s minions dogged Evan all the way back to his quarters.

Evan locked the door behind him, asked Atlantis to only admit Weir or John or Parrish, the only surviving member of his team, and he took a long, hot shower.

The water stung in the cuts at his hips and chest and back, but Evan could wash it all off, the stench of adrenaline and rough sex and fear and _Bluebell_.

He pulled on a fresh uniform and, because sitting hurt, knelt at his desk and typed up a more detailed report, leaving out his encounter with John in the jumper, and how he’d manipulated Atlantis into hiding him and John from the search parties. By the time he reached the end of the report, his hands were shaking and tears were slipping down his face, because he’d fucked up, he’d fallen back, and Stevens and Walker would be another Skinner and Shortshanks in Evan’s nightmares.

Evan sent the report to Parrish for a friendly spell-check before it was finalized and submitted to Elizabeth, and then he flung himself on his bed to try to sleep.

He must have fallen asleep, because he was jolted awake by someone initiating the lock on his door.

He sat up, scrambled for his radio and his sidearm, but it was John, fully human.

John stood in the doorway and stared at him for a long moment. It felt a little like deja vu, from the intensity in his eyes. He stepped into Evan’s quarters, and the door hissed shut. Then he crossed the room and perched tentatively on the edge of the bed beside Evan.

He reached out, skimmed his fingers over Evan’s hip.

Evan flinched reflexively.

“I hurt you,” John said.

“No, you didn’t. I wanted it. I wanted you. I needed you, and I needed you lucid, and -”

“I never wanted to hurt you.”

Evan shrugged one shoulder. “Sometimes I like it rough. I _need_ it rough. You know what I mean.”

“No, I don’t.” John studied Evan. “My father never laid a hand on me.”

“He never had to.” Evan had heard of Patrick Sheppard all growing up. The man never had to get his hands dirty, but he wasn’t afraid to. Everyone else was just afraid of what would happen when he did.

“I never want to hurt you again.”

“We’re soldiers. We get hurt. We deal.” Evan wanted to squirm under John’s piercing gaze. His gaze was sharper, so much more incisive when he was fully human, even though transformed he’d always looked a second away from eating Evan alive.

John leaned in so his forehead was resting against Evan’s. “Hurting isn’t dealing. I won’t ever hurt you again, understand?”

Evan pulled back. “Don’t make promises you can’t keep.”

“This is a promise I can, and I will.” John leaned in and kissed Evan softly, softly, like a moth’s wings, whisper-light and capable of flight and drawn, inexorably, to a deadly flame.


End file.
